


clear as day

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Lance Blames Everyone Else For Relationship Problems, M/M, Spoilers for Season 2, Trust Issues, Unrequited Fitz/Simmons, Unrequited Love, baggage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:16:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4802465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Lance and Mack have is simple and honest. Sex, friendship, and none of that love crap. </p><p>(And okay, maybe Lance still loves Bobbi and Mack loves Fitz, but at least they have one uncomplicated thing in the shitstorm of their lives. Lance just hopes it stays uncomplicated.)</p><p>Spoilers for all of Season 2. Lots of angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	clear as day

Lance knows that love isn’t real. 

It feels real. It feels like truth, like forever binding to your bones, coursing through your blood.

But like most things, in the end, love turns to shit.

\--

Mack’s hands on him, slow, gentle, pressing him into the mattress. Mack’s mouth, tongue skillful, teasing him, kisses on shoulders, chest stomach, making Lance beg to go lower, then laughing and moving back up.

What he had with Mack, it wasn’t love. More like friends with benefits. 

But friendship, sometimes, is real. 

(The benefits were definitely real).

It was all the good parts of love, really. The trust, the companionship, the sex, the affection. Without the fucking horror, without the tooth and nail fights. Without wondering why Lance would give up everything for love, but he always fell for people who put the job before anything. (And sure, Bobbi had a cause and Lance was mostly working for the cash, but they’re both killers and who is she to fucking judge?)

Mack, of course, had his own love problems. 

The guy had it bad, for Fitz. Who was either in love with some scientist named Jemma or just not ready for a relationship. 

Lance didn’t quite know what was up with Fitz. Most of the team seemed to think he used to be a lot more articulate. Or possibly even more of a genius. It wasn’t clear. But most of the team seemed to feel sorry for Fitz, and while Lance was pretty good at reading people, you don’t have to be to see why that would just piss Fitz off.

But beyond that, Lance could tell that Fitz had scars and anger and bitterness and self-loathing, and the chap didn’t even have the good sense to get sloshed every night to soften the hurt. Lance was pretty sure that once in a great while Fitz and Mack were together, but it was clear that it was rare, and that most nights Fitz chose to be alone. It was clear also that Mack wasn’t happy but that he wasn’t about to make Fitz’s tough time tougher. 

Seeing Mack with Fitz, all the love and all that restraint, the gentleness without condescension: all at once, Lance could see that Mack loved Fitz, that Fitz wasn’t close to being ready, and that Lance really, really wanted to make love to Mack. 

It wasn’t pity. Or even camaraderie over the fact that they were both love’s bitch. It was all that softness, the carefulness, that Mack had, that people like Lance and Bobbi never could. 

The fact that his work on robotics made it clear that Mack was incredibly talented with his hands … well, that didn’t hurt either.

Lance wasn’t one for games. He said flat out, _we’re both lonely and bored, I know you love the Scot and I’d rather gouge my eyes out than love someone again, so we both know exactly what we’re getting into._

Mack appreciated the honesty.

And that’s what they had, the two of them. No false expectations. Just two fucked up human beings (okay, Lance more than Mack most likely). 

Just two people seeing each other for who they are.

Not love. Just truth.

Pure and simple.

After sex, Lance would lean his head on Mack’s shoulder, both of them catching their breath, and Lance would feel safer than he had in years.

\--

Lance likes the team. He didn’t think he’d find another team after Hartley – people who were decent and who could still kick ass were few and far between, but Coulson, May, the rest: they seemed good. And Hartley wouldn’t have trusted them if they weren’t.

Being with Mack makes it all easy of course. 

Then Bobbi joins the team, and nothing’s easy.

She brings Jemma, and then everything’s confusing for Fitz, and so everything’s confusing for Mack too.

Bobbi still brings out the worst in Lance: it’s rage and need and guilt and hurt and desperate lust and a bond like glue all at once, and it’s not any easier, even though they both pretend it’s just exes using each other for a good lay; they both know it’s not.

Love, as always, is bullshit. Love is knowing you’re fooling yourself and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

He sees that Bobbi and Mack have their own thing. Not an affair, Lance is pretty sure. Some secret, some goal, that the others don’t know. 

At first, Lance doesn’t really care. He figures the secret can’t be that bad. Bobbi’s capable of anything, of course, but he knows Mack would never intentionally hurt a friend. 

\--

Lance spends some nights with Bobbi, some with Mack. 

With Bobbi, it’s athletic. Almost a bloodsport. It’s perfect and it reminds Lance of everything he misses, and he’s pretty damn sure Bobbi is thinking the same thing, but so far neither of them have the guts to say so.

With Mack, it’s different. More warmth. Lance figures that both his lovers could easily kick his ass (which, yeah, is obviously a huge turn-on), but while Bobbi works his body like a machine, Mack likes it gentle. Mack’s dominant, and Lance really enjoys that side of him, but it’s never about Mack’s strength; it’s always a seduction, Lance submitting to Mack taking him apart with gentle movements, with perfect skill. 

With Bobbi he feels like his heart is going to crack right out of his chest. With Bobbi, he feels like he kind of wants it to.

With Mack he feels like they’ve both found safe haven, like they’re both on solid ground and it’s only because of each other. It’s so good, so full, that Lance is sometimes scared it will become more than friendship and then everything will go straight to hell. 

He’s glad he has both. He’s not sure he’d be able to handle either one without the other.

\--

Lance doesn’t give a shit about agencies or authorities. He doesn’t really give a shit about SHIELD.

Except that his team cares about SHIELD, and Lance cares about his team.

Something’s rotten, getting rottener, and Lance knows it. And as much as he hates to admit it, his gut is telling him that Bobbi and Mack are at the fucking center.

Bobbi won’t tell him. She lies, she starts an argument to distract him. As if he couldn’t see through that tactic by now.

Mack won’t want to lie to his face, though. And even if he does, Mack is a genius in the lab but he’s no spy; Lance will probably be able to get a read.

He tells Mack that he knows something is up.

And then he can’t breathe. 

Mack’s arm is around his neck, strong, too strong to resist. 

Everything starts to go dark.

Two decades of never letting his guard down around anyone, and now Lance is about to die because he thought that what he had with another human being was real.

He curses himself for being such an idiot.

\--

He wakes up chained to the floor. 

He’s not dead.

He’s still an idiot.

Mack and Bobbi were betraying the team. And who knows what they were planning to do with him, now.

Clearly, they weren’t who Lance thought they were. Mack sure wasn’t. And Bobbi – for all their fights, he never thought they’d fight about Bobbi betraying SHIELD (and wasn’t that just added insult – all the times Bobbi lied to Lance for SHIELD, lied about almost dying, lied about who she killed, lied about how much her undercover ops really did fuck with her head, and then Bobbi just sold SHIELD out for some off-brand imitation).

When Bobbi tries to explain, Lance half expects her to knock him out to stop him from escaping. He’d never been scared of her before – well, terrified for all sorts of reasons, sure, but never ever that she would use her fighting skills on him, that he had to fear violence – but after Mack grabbed his neck and squeezed, after the arm that Lance had slept so soundly on became a weapon, who really knew?

Lance escaped the ship and headed to where he could help Coulson’s team. He trusted Coulson. 

And besides, destroying this new fake SHIELD was the only reasonable response to Bobbi and Mack and all the ways they pretended to love him.

\-- 

Coulson takes the agency back. With concessions.

Peace is made. With the lying traitors.

Lance doesn’t speak to them at first. Doesn’t think any good can come of it.

Bobbi pretends to be hurt. Lance gives a fuck. It feels like their divorce all fucking over again. Like a knife through the back.

Mack doesn’t bother him. He sees that Lance is still mad, respects his space. 

Lance doesn’t really give a fuck about that either.

\--

It takes Lance a few days to see why some of them are getting over the great temporary SHIELD schism faster than others.

For Lance, it’s personal. It’s old baggage.

For some of them, it’s the ghost of HYDRA, the wound barely closed ripped open again.

Lance can see that’s what it is for Fitz. 

He can see now that Fitz handled betrayal even worse than Lance did. He could see that some of Fitz’s scars were because his hurt came at the hands of someone he considered a friend.

He can see that Fitz can’t even speak to Mack now. That to Fitz, Mack is just Grant Ward all over again. It doesn’t matter that it was a different deal – Mack and Bobbi and the rest were assholes, not mass murdering Nazis – but to Fitz, it doesn’t matter. 

Mack gets himself almost blown up, laid up in the hospital with serious injuries, just to protect Fitz. And Fitz still can’t look Mack in the eye.

Lance can see that Fitz is trying not to fall apart, that he thinks cutting Mack out will keep him together.

Lance can see that Mack is quietly breaking in two.

He sits down and tells Mack that he’s willing to forgive.

Mack is more relieved than he wants to show, but Lance notices anyway.

Mack says the next drink is on him.

Lance says that Mack will need to be far more creative than that to make up for a choking and a kidnapping. 

They smile, and they’re friends (with very generous make-up-for-kidnapping level of benefits) again. 

Okay, maybe not friends just yet. 

But they’re something. 

Lance can tell Mack wants to know why forgiveness comes easier to him than Lance will ever give it to Bobbi. But Mack knows better than to ask.

\--

Of all the things that Bobbi has done to make Lance hate her, of all the things that have made him so angry he wanted to bang his head against a rock, the worst was when she tried to die for him.

The last thing in the world he would ever want is for her to die for him. And she fucking knows that.

They're both fucking hopeless.

It was less than an hour, but it felt like a day, that she was lying bleeding in his arms. He yelled at her to stay, but her pulse kept fading. As always, she did what she did, and fuckall did it matter if he was crying and desperate. 

He waited by her side, before surgery and after. Everyone came by to lend support. Mack let his hand linger on Lance’s shoulder, and Lance almost broke down, but he smiled and said thanks and went back to watching Bobbi, waiting for her stubbornness to win, for the badass warrior to fight back. He knew this about her: that Bobbi didn’t lose, Bobbi didn’t fall, Bobbi’s toughness always won every fucking fight in the end, and he hoped against everything that he wasn’t wrong.

When she woke, she told him that she was going to quit SHIELD, and for a second Lance wondered why it took a fucking bullet through the heart for her to do something she should have done years ago, but he was so fucking grateful that he just grinned and started crying again.

\--

“Good luck,” Mack said.

Lance shrugged. “Honestly, I think after she’s fully recovered, we’ll get about 6 good months, then we’ll probably break up again. 6 months more, she’ll probably rejoin SHIELD.” He gave a cynical sigh.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Hope’s not your thing. But don’t tell me that even if it goes bad, you won’t think it was worth it for another go. I know you both too well.”

Lance let out a breath, smiled a little. “You know Bobbi never minded. Me and you. If you ever wanted to come see us.... Maybe play referee?”

“That’s a really good offer. But I think there’s a few things at SHIELD I need to see through.”

“All right, company man. Stay in touch, then. Been good knowing you.” Lance reached out his hand for a handshake.

Mack shook it, and it was odd to be so formal, to feel the heat of his hand with the rest of him so distant. “You too.”

**Author's Note:**

> For Trope Bingo, as a take on the "fake relationship" square.


End file.
